Hi everyone,
and happy new year once more! I hope your 2013 will be successful, and full of health, joy and positive moments.
As some of you may already know, I now have a professional site offering language services at www.languagebond.com.
However, I am not fully satisfied with the web designer’s job, since he insisted that my person should be left out of the site, since it’s a business site. Anyway, this site hasn’t brought me much so far in terms of activity or visibility.
So, I am considering creating another, parallel, website/blog to promote myself as a polyglot. Something similar to Luca’s or Benny’s websites. Do you all have any advice on what platform/provider to choose? I have checked the services offered by Wordpress and Wordpress.com and would be willing to pay a bit for the hosting and other fares, although I am not willing to pay thousands of euros to another web designer.
I am not an IT dummy, even if I have never really studied IT. Do you think I could learn how to use Wordpress and create a customizable site? Or should I just stick to Wordpress.com, or other free blogs?
Any advice is more than welcome!
All the best to everybody,
Michele
mike
i think wordpress is the best way for you
you can pay a domain.com and put your website there with wordpress
if you don’t have many notion of creating a wordpress website you can get many free templates on web
search from: free wordpress templates
after it you have only to do your changes on it…
once i had bought an assign of themes website: look there : http://www.elegantthemes.com, isn’t so expansive and there have a lot of wordpress themes, very easy especially for newbies like me 
Hi Juscelino, thanks for answering.
I have seen that the choice is between wordpress.com (easy to use but not very customizable) and wordpress.org (more customizable, but requires more work on my side and I need to pay for the hosting). Which one are you talking about?
Anybody else?
mike
both are different sites… but the same thing!
1º step: buy a domain.com and a hosting service
2º step: install on your website folder the wordpress system (yes, wordpress isn’t a website, it is a system!) Installing WordPress « WordPress Codex
3º step: configure and customise your wordpress
4º step: your website is ready
of course it takes a time to understand all the process!
i didn’t know nothing about it, when i needed to use it I took some days to understand how to install, but you have tons of tutorials on internet about HOW TO INSTALL WORDPRESS
how i sad, it will not be so so easy, you will need some days to learn the process, but its free, and after the first time you will be able to do a simple website in one hour 
Hi Mike
As far as I know, with http://wordpress.org/ you need to download and install the software, so you’ll need a server, or someone who hosts it for you. As you already have www.languagebond.com, you are probably already paying for a domain.
If you choose http://wordpress.com/, you just need an account and wordpress does the rest for you; you can start blogging, but you also have ads and it is not so customizable as the one you install on a server. But there are also premium versions with no ads and other better features; take a look:
Blogger is also a possibility, it now has the feature to include pages; as far as I know there are no ads and you can embed lots of other tools.
http://www.wix.com/ is a free tool to create websites and it is not difficult to customize, I tried it some time ago for a photo portfolio.
https://about.me/, http://www.webnode.com/, http://www.cabanova.com/, http://www.flashbuilder.net/ are all similar website creators
And you can also create pages in Facebook, or use a wiki like pbworks.
There are lots of possibilities, it also depends on your purpose, and what you want to include.
Fernanda
@Juscelino: sorry, but what you said is not true. This page explain all the differences between .org and .com.
@Fernanda: thanks, I have already read the possible upgrades offered by Wordpress.com. I already have an underused blog with Blogger and a couple of Facebook pages, but they are not customizable enough, inmmy opinion. As I said, I would like to have a website similar to the ones other polyglots have, where I can tell who I am, what I do, give advice about language learning and so on, i.e. all things I cannot do with my business website as it was designed.
To make it clear, I am already aware of the platforms I can choose from, but would like to get some suggestions from people who have already used them, especially Wordpress, or who know more about this topic than I do.
@mikebond
Can you post the URLs of those polyglots websites? I tried to find them, but to no avail.
And how much customization do you need? Do you just want to use a fancy theme, or need to edit css files?
Fernanda
@Juscelino
I forgot to paste the link: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org | WordPress.com Support
@mfr
Luca’s website, “powered by Wordpress”: http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/
Benny the Irish Polyglot’s website: http://www.fluentin3months.com/
I think I’d be happy with a site like Luca’s. Benny’s look more complex and probably more expensive. I am willing to pay some 100-200 euros a year for the Wordpress upgrades, but not thousands of euros for a web designer to make another site for me. I want to have a site that I can customize a bit, without having to pay anyone who’d do that for me.
I have just a basic idea of what CSS files are, so I don’t think I’d need to edit them, at least not at an early stage.
Hi Michele,
I have been blogging on the website of “Blogger” since July 2010. There you have schablones which you can use to design your layout free of charge. Have a look at my polyglot blog, to give you an example. For my blog I didn’t have to pay anything!
For example: Fasulyes Polyglot Blog (Blogger): http://fasulyespolyglotblog.blogspot.de/
Good luck!
Fasulye
@mikebond
I looked at Luca’s website and it doesn’t seem to have anything special, but you need a theme that allows you to edit the header if you want to choose the image there. There are free themes than can do that and if you want to customize it yourself, you can do it for free.
Fernanda
Ok, thanks for the advice, Fernanda, I’ll have a look at those customizable themes.
Getting a good domain name is key,
after that, picking a good theme and learning how to modify the css to fit your needs should save you thousands of dollars from a professional web designer
Michele,
You can go to youtube and view a walkthrough on how to launch your own wordpress site in detail. And make sure you understand SEO. Most say Wordpress is the way to go, it’s easy and flexible and not just for Mommy-bloggers.
Thanks to everybody for your advice. I have decided I will start with a free Wordpress.com site (maybe with a few upgrades).
I now have to think of a good domain name. Any suggestions?
@mikebond
According to this review I’ve just found, I’d say you made a good choice:
http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/wordpress-com-review.html